Could
there be a crystal pyramid in the waters off Bimini that is one
of the sunken remnants of the lost civilisation of Atlantis? The
question could be purely theoretical, but the question is far
more practical and pertinent: there is an eyewitness report from
a source whose claim has never been disproven… and an artefact!
The story begins in 1970, when Dr. Ray Brown, a naturopathic practitioner
from Mesa, Arizona, was scuba-diving near the Bahamas, twenty
miles off a location that is known as the Tongue of the Ocean
– according to an interview Charles Berlitz had with Brown
for his 1984 book “Atlantis: The Eighth Continent”.
Brown and his group were looking for treasure, left on Spanish
galleons sunken several centuries ago that were known to laid
scattered on the ocean floor. A storm had hit just the area and
had stirred up the ocean floor, which meant that new booty might
be discovered as sand had been moved about and might have exposed
portions of these galleons. Apparently, the storm had also swept
some of the team’s equipment and possessions overboard –
including, apparently, a camera – which is why we only have
a story, and no accompanying photographs.

Brown recounted that during the
dive, he became separated from his fellow four divers. While trying
to catch up with them, he noticed a pyramid shape appearing below
him. In a televised interview in 1980, for the series “In
Search Of”, Brown stated that “we found ruins and
buildings everywhere”, adding that “The buildings
had an Egyptian or classic look to them.”
He calculated that the pyramid was 22 fathoms down (44 yards),
rose to 120 feet, while parts of it were obscured by the seafloor.
He stated that the joints between the blocks of the buildings
were almost indiscernible, thus attesting of the structure’s
good preservation and construction excellence. He described the
capstone as resembling lapis lazuli – an intense and beautiful
blue.
But more importantly, Brown discovered an entrance into the pyramid,
which he followed, to arrive in a small rectangular room with
a pyramid-shaped ceiling. Though Brown was without a flashlight,
there was somehow sufficient light inside for him to see. He described
the room as having no algae or other material attached to the
walls and bright. But it wasn’t the walls that caught his
attention. A metallic rod, three inches in diameter, hung down
from the apex of the ceiling, the end of which held a multi-faceted
gem. Below, on the floor of the room, stood a carved stone topped
by a stone plate, which held two metal bronze hands. Inside the
two hands was a crystal sphere… which Brown decided to take
with him. Previously, he had tried to dislodge the metallic rod
from the ceiling, but was unable to. Brown relates that as he
left the structure, he heard a voice, warning him never to return.
A variation of the discovery emerges in “Prepare for the
Landings”, in which authors Michaeel and Aurora Ellegion
relate that they befriended Brown in the 1980s and that he disclosed
that the discovery was made in 1968, not 1970. That he was on
one of the boats with the famous French diver Jacques Cousteau.
That the site was not off the Bahamas, but 100 miles west, toward
South Bimini. But despite different circumstances and location,
all other details of the pyramid and what transpired inside, are
identical with the accounts that Brown repeatedly told in public.
When researcher Greg Little enquired with the Cousteau Society,
he learned that Brown was definitely not part of any Cousteau
expedition. But, as mentioned, in television and other interviews,
Brown was consistent that he made the discovery in 1970, not 1968
and the fact that some retold his story different, years after
his death, is not Brown’s fault.

Extraordinary
treasures not only require extraordinary evidence, they also come
with extraordinary emotions in the person who has discovered them.
In the case of Brown, he said that there was fear. Fear that the
government – whether local or United States – would
confiscate his crystal if he made it public. But by 1975, it seems
that the importance of the find and making it known to the world
outweighed this fear. Still, in hindsight, he would only show
the crystal sphere about a half dozen or so times, but each event
was… eventful, the visitors describing a series of strange
activities associated with it. Then, less than a decade after
going public, Brown disappeared off stage, taking his sphere with
him. The story remained and became an often-repeated story of
evidence of a lost civilisation, but nothing more.
Part of the problem – and Brown’s problem –
was that even though there was an artefact, there was only Brown’s
word for it. There are no photographs of the pyramid, as Brown
was diving without camera. No-one afterwards was able to locate
the site or find the structures Brown claimed he had discovered.
The sphere is remarkable, but it is “only” a crystal
sphere, with no irrefutable powers that would make everyone convinced
we are in the presence of one of the most important ancient artefacts
on the planet. In the interview with Berlitz, Brown related that
“I'm not the only person who has seen the ruins –
others have seen them from the air and say they are five miles
wide and more than that in length.” But the problem was
that if that were true, none of those witnesses were on record
or had spoken out about it. Brown was one man with an artefact
and a story telling a most interesting, but uncorroborated tale.
It meant that in the final analysis, it all bore down to one question:
was he believable?

Then, Dr. Brown disappeared off
the scene. He died in the early 1990s, and the story of the crystal
was mentioned by some, but largely was just “one of those
stories”, with no proof, as the fate of the crystal sphere
was unknown.
But then some years ago, the crystal – today dubbed by some
“The Atlantis Orb” – resurfaced, in the hands
of Arthur Fanning, a resident of Sedona (Arizona), who refers
to the object as the “Eye of God”.
I met Arthur Fanning in Amsterdam, in early November 2009, when
he was invited as a lecturer at the Frontier Symposium 2009. I
was able to meet the sphere in a private setting, as well as hang
out with the new owner himself. Arthur was down to earth, relaxed,
though did take the sphere with him everywhere, keeping it in
a specially designed pouch on his belt. He lets people see and
be around the sphere, even inviting members of an almost five-hundred
big audience on to the stage to come and see the sphere for themselves.
When I contacted him to verify some details as to how he got the
sphere in his possession, Fanning said that he had known Brown
personally. After Fanning had held a channelling, “he invited
me to a friend’s house for a private showing of the sphere.
Before Ray passed on, [D.J.] received the sphere. He had it for
about a week but the energy was too intense and he gave it to
me. He said he was guided to do so.” Fanning also inherited
a picture that Ray had commissioned, which depicted how the sphere
inside the pyramid was in the two hands that held it and the golden-coloured
rod that came down from the ceiling that had the red-faceted point
hovering over the sphere.

There is no doubt that Fanning’s
sphere was Brown’s, but it is also clear that it took Fanning
some time after receiving the object before deciding he would
show it. Like Brown, getting massive public attention to the object
is not his desire, though once he has an audience, he allows everyone
to see it – as per Brown’s modus operandi. At each
display, Fanning offers everyone the opportunity to verify the
interesting characteristics associated with Brown’s crystal.
Which are: when turned into a specific position, in the centre
of the crystal, three pyramid-shaped objects become visible. From
another vantage point, a single human eye was said to manifest
itself.
Both during Brown and Fanning’s exhibitions of the object,
there was widespread interpretation and speculation of what all
of this meant. An association with Atlantis was easily drawn,
as it was after all discovered in a sunken pyramid. Experiments
with compass needles also revealed that when the needle was placed
next to the orb, it would spin counter-clockwise, but when moved
as little as two inches away from the sphere, it would spin clockwise.
On the “In Search Of” show, Brown showed how the sphere
also magnetically repelled objects – showing that the sphere
is definitely not an object he quickly bought in a shopping mall.
When she confronted with the sphere, psychic Elizabeth Bacon believed
that it had belonged to Thoth and that this object was somehow
associated with the Emerald Tablets – though obviously not
an Emerald Tablet itself, seeing it was a crystal sphere.

Could
Brown’s crystal be a remnant of Atlantis? Was the pyramid
in which he discovered the object a remnant of Atlantis too? The
fact that Brown’s story involved a sunken pyramid off the
coast of Bimini obviously brings his story into the realm of the
American psychic Edgar Cayce, who proclaimed that after 1968,
evidence of Atlantis would be found off the coast of Bimini. Was
Brown’s story the fulfilment of this prophecy – however
poor Cayce’s track record for predicting the future was?
And what to think of Brown? He clearly did not do it for the money.
But hoaxers often go for fame and if so, Brown definitely achieved
his goal. There are no photographs. There are no corroborating
witness reports. So the central question is always whether Brown
can be believed.
Greg Little relates that after an appearance on the Coast-to-Coast
radio show in which he tackled Brown’s sphere, he received
“an email from an elderly man who said he had been a friend
of Brown since childhood. After exchanging a few emails he related
that Brown confided to him that the entire affair was a hoax Brown
concocted to take advantage of all of the media controversy that
had been stirred up by the 1968 discovery of the Bimini Road.”
Little adds that there is no evidence to support the claim that
his contact knew Brown or speaks the truth. However, if Brown
did want to be part of the Bimini Road as evidence for Atlantis
controversy, he waited a long time – seven years –
before he began to show the crystal. If he had immediately launched
his story in 1970, it would indeed seem logical. But with Brown’s
saga beginning in 1975, it is clear that if it was a hoax, it
was largely a stand-alone campaign. Furthermore, Brown himself
did not make many references to Cayce, the Bimini Road or other
buzz words that could make his story far more sensational and
known than what he did.

Some of those who have looked
into the story, like Greg Little, have concluded it is a likely
hoax and point out that the weakest element of the story is that
none of the other four divers ever stepped forward. But there
is a perfectly normal explanation for this, which Little seems
not to have caught. When Brown told the basic story, of how he
heard a voice say “You have got what you came for. Now leave
and don’t come back”, he expanded that the other divers
had heard the same voice and warning, even though they were not
inside the pyramid. Apparently aware that Brown had found something,
but they hadn’t, they decided to return, but drowned during
that dive. The possibility that the other divers died, of course,
explains why no-one of them ever stepped forward. It could also
be the reason why Brown waited for five years before going public
with the story and it could even be the reason why – if
we are to accept the Ellegion’s version as accurate on some
counts – why on occasion Brown decided to change the location
of where precisely it had happened. Indeed, one might argue that
knowing that he was warned not to come back and that those who
did, died, it would be prudent not to give an accurate location,
knowing that future divers, even if only trying to verify Brown’s
account, could meet a similar fate. Of course – to ring
the sceptical bell – the notion that four people had died
and Brown remained the only eyewitness is also the perfect circumstance
created if it were all a hoax. But for a hoax, there needs to
be motivation and the one key denominator about the entire Brown
and the Crystal Sphere saga is that no-one has seen Brown as a
trickster, or a hoaxer, and that the entire methodology of how
he went about it, was clearly that of a man who had a genuine
artefact, and not someone who knew he had created a perfect hoax
and was going to exploit it to the fullest.
So with Brown, all we have today is a sphere, a mute object –
except to those who can psychically connect to it – which
has some anomalous capabilities, but which might need to be tested
further in the near future. If so, then Brown’s Crystal
Sphere might finally make it into the ranks of truly amazing anomalous
artefacts that challenge our current paradigm of what Mankind’s
past looked like. Staring into it, when we see three pyramids,
do we also see this future for this object?